What is Postcolonial Film? A Short Introduction to Postcolonialism and Cinema

What is postcolonial film? And what, exactly, makes a film 'postcolonial'? In this episode, we'll answer those questions and explore some of the creative ways that postcolonial filmmakers are working to decolonize cinema.

The host, Dr. Alexander K. Smith, holds an MA from Oxford University and a PhD in the anthropology of Tibet and the Himalayas from the University of Paris, France.

Endnotes:

1) The phrase ‘the white man’s burden’ was coined by English author and arch-colonialist, Rudyard Kipling, in a 1899 poem published in The Times (London). The phrase began to be used by pro-colonial authors across entire the English-speaking world. The concept, in extreme brief, was that Western civilization (by which Kipling and his contemporaries would have meant ‘white’ civilization) had a moral obligation to carry their colonies from a state of ‘savagery’ to a state of ‘civilization’. The phrase’s popularity saw it used for decades as a rallying cry for the alleged ethical-imperatives of colonialism. It’s worth noting, however, that some contemporaneous authors living in colonial states were highly critical of the concept.

2) I should note that a number of authors, like Fanon, preferred the term ‘imperial gaze’ rather than colonial gaze, which is similar but has its own etymology and particular historical usage. The phrase “imperial gaze” has also grown enormously in popularity due to is usage by E. Ann Kaplan in her published work. For the sake of simplicity, however, in this introductory video, I am conflating the two terms. On “the gaze” in a general sense, I would recommend reading “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectatorship” (1992), which is a brilliant critique of Laura Mulvey’s "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1975), which pioneered the concept of The Male Gaze. E. Ann Kaplan’s "Women in Film: Both Sides of the Camera" (1983) and "Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film and the Imperial Gaze" (1997) are also great starting points.

3) This is one of the core arguments of Fanon’s seminal “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952), although you will find aspects of this argument in many of his major works – including “The Wretched of the Earth” (1961), “A Dying Colonialism” (1959), and “Toward the African Revolution” (1964). Honestly, Fanon is one of the most brilliant political and revolutionary minds of his generation. If you’re reading this – I cannot recommend his work more highly. Although, keep in mind that across the majority published work, Fanon is not writing as an academic. His work is explicitly partisan and revolutionary – but it is extremely well reasoned, moving, and articulate.

4) To my knowledge, Fanon first used the phrase ‘colonial mentality’ in this sense in “The Wretched of the Earth” (1961).

5) See: Fanon. 1952. “Black Skin, White Masks” and Fanon. 1961. “The Wretched of the Earth”.

6) So, ‘hybridity’ is one of the most widely referenced (and also widely disputed) concepts in postcolonial theory. They core text here is Homi K. Bhabha’s “The Location of Culture” (1994). However, colonial and post-colonial hybridity are much more theoretically complex than they appear to be at face value, so there’s no space to dig into it here. If you are interested, though, in additional to Bhaba (1994), have a look at Gayatri Spivak’s and Néstor Gariía Canclini’s discourses as well, as they take a different tack on the issue.

7) Something that I’ve noticed from my classroom teaching is that North American students often (and understandably) think of post-colonialism entirely in terms of race. But there are also post-colonial subjectivities that stem from historical, indigenous perceptions of ethnicity and cultural diversity (which can differ significantly from the perception of race in North American political discourse). Ireland is one of the classic examples. Hence this clip from the (great) postcolonial film The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006).

8) Language oppression is one of the core policies shared, historically, by many different colonial governments, but it is also a key component of cultural genocide. See: Bosmajian, Haig (1983) “The Language of Oppression”. For a history of colonial policies of abducting children, see: Schissel and Wotherspoon (2002) “The Legacy of School for Aboriginal People: Education, Oppression, and Emancipation” and “They Came for the Children: Canada, Aboriginal Peoples, and Residential Schools” (2012) published by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

00:00 Empire Films
00:55 The Colonial Gaze
02:41 How Empire Films Internalized Colonial Biases
04:10 "Decolonizing the Mind"
05:00 Defining Postcolonial Film
06:34 Indigenous Non-Western Perspectives
08:01 Identity and Hybridity
10:09 The Importance of Speaking Non-Western Languages
12:19 Conclusion

[ArmchairAcademics]

Would you like to see us make more content on postcolonialism? Let us know what you think and don't forget to drop a like and subscribe to support the channel! [corrections follow below]

Corrections:
1) I forgot to add "Shakespeare Wallah" (1965) to the list of featured films. That's a shame because it's a lovely and bittersweet little film about troupes of actors performing Shakespeare in India in the 1960s. Very close to my heart.

2) In all honesty, I could have done a better job explaining the colonial gaze. One aspect that I should have emphasized is that the colonial gaze combines its layered perspectives (of the filmmaker, the characters, and the audience) to homogenize and normalize colonial discourses about the Other. In the literature, this is often framed as both an explicit and implicit erasure of indigenous identities and languages.

[sabrinette]

YouTube blessed me with this suggestion and I couldn't be more grateful ❤

[josephanthro]

I'm actually working on an ethnography on Postcolonialism in sport, and this video definitely gave me some ideas to touch upon in the book.

[diegomieryterangc]

I'd also add Akira Kurosawa's Derzu Uzala, as a great example of post-colonial or anti-colonial film.

[HarborMonkey]

I am teaching a course on Decolonization and Cinema and resources such as this are scarce. Thank you and I look forward to more, especially on the complex history of post-colonial cinema. In our course, we view works by indigenous filmmakers such as Sky Hopinka and Erica Tremblay but also seminal works of the Third Cinema movement and Black Futurism/Afro-Surrealist gems. Sadly, most cinema studies still center the works of Western cinema.

[diegomieryterangc]

I think Avatar is a colonialist film disguised as a critique. It exoticizes otherness with a series of visual clichés. And more deeply, its an example of another type of colonization, the colonization of the mind via virtuality, and the experience of reality as a visual phenomenon. It makes USA-style salvation glamourous to the world.

[larryparis]

This is an excellent episode, with so much to discuss.

If people are going to be serious about overcoming the tragedies of postcolonialism, neocolonialism, and cultural imperialism, and assert their indigenous identities by decolonizing the mind, they are going to need to jettison a lot of mental baggage.

One of the film excerpts used here include Rabbit-Proof Fence (based on the 1996 Australian book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, by Doris Pilkington), and is well worth watching. The Indigenous Peoples of Australia and the Torres Straits suffered greatly under colonialism. With the English establishing a colony in Australia in 1788 under the policy of terra nullius (basically, land empty of people), although the Indigenous Australians pioneered that continent ~50, 000 years ago, what followed was land dispossession, genocide, assimilation, culturicide, eugenics, languages that became extinct, and the occurrence of the Stolen Generation (in which the colonizers forcibly removed Indigenous children and mixed race children from their families; these children were, among other things, relocated to missions to be indoctrinated into Christianity and learn the skills of servants for white families). Since many of these Aboriginal and mixed-race Australians became a literal “captive audience” for Christian indoctrination, they either lost or never learned their ancestral religion(s) or other cultural practices.

While some native Australians have not lost their identity completely, or have opted for syncretic beliefs to motivate them in their struggle for self-determination, many have parroted English preachers and carry bibles around. Some even became Christian preachers. This was at least one way to get some credibility with the white colonizers in Australia, past and present. This same scenario has played out around the world. So, to even try to assert their Indigenous identity by decolonizing their minds, which would have to include – if decolonizing the mind is going to be legitimate - getting rid of the colonizer’s religion. This does not seem too likely.

[PritiWadhwani-gp]

Hello, have you written an article on this topic? Love your work

[dhaval]

You justify the word Academic in your name, great job, superb video essay, We Bharatiyas (Indian) are just know starting to understand the depth of what happened to our way of life under colonial past, both British and Islamic

[leocook]

Great video and good selection of films to illustrate the points.

[caribe]

The feminist postcolonial perspective is completely absent to this video. As it is the sexualized bodies of the colonial subjects even in some of the films discussed in the video. For a film to decolonize the spectators gaze it needs to flip the colonial script and representation alone is not always enough to justify a movie as postcolonial.